1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid ejecting apparatus such as an ink jet printing apparatus, and particularly to a liquid ejecting apparatus that ejects a liquid from a nozzle by deforming an operation surface constituting one portion of a pressure chamber that is in communication with the nozzle, thereby inducing pressure fluctuation in liquid within the pressure chamber.
2. Related Art
The liquid ejecting apparatus has a liquid ejecting head capable of ejecting liquid as a droplet from a nozzle, and various types of liquid are ejected from the liquid ejecting head. A typical example of such a liquid ejecting apparatus that may be given is an image printing apparatus such as an ink jet printing apparatus having an ink jet print head (hereinafter, “print head”) that performs printing by ejecting liquid ink as a droplet from a nozzle of the print head. In addition to this, furthermore, the liquid ejecting apparatus is used to eject various types of liquid, including dyes for use in a color filter of an LCD, an organic material for use in an organic electro luminescence (EL) display, and an electrode material for use in electrode forming. A print head for use in an image printing apparatus ejects a liquid ink, and a dye ejecting head for use in a display fabricating apparatus ejects a solution of dyes of red (R), green (G), and blue (B). Furthermore, an electrode material ejecting head for use in an electrode forming apparatus ejects a liquid electrode material, and a bio-organic matter ejecting head for use in a chip fabricating apparatus ejects a solution of a liquid bio-organic matter.
A print head equipped in the above-described printer is configured so as to introduce ink into a pressure chamber from an ink supply source such as an ink cartridge, activate pressure generating means of inducing pressure fluctuation in ink within the pressure chamber, and eject ink in the pressure chamber as a droplet from a nozzle using the pressure fluctuation. In such a print head a plurality of nozzles are densely installed so as to improve the quality of printed images. Accordingly, the pressure chamber that is in communication with each nozzle is also densely formed, and, As a result, the partitions dividing the adjacent pressure chambers from one another are extremely thin. Due to this, a partition may, for example, bend toward an adjacent pressure chamber side accompanying the pressure fluctuation of ink in the pressure chamber, caused by the activation of the pressure generating means, when ink is ejected from any given nozzle. In regards to this point, if ejection is performed even by adjacent nozzles located on both sides of the ejecting nozzle at the same time, respectively, the internal pressure of the pressure chambers on both sides will also increase, and flexing of the partitions can therefore be suppressed. However, if ejection is not performed by either one of the nozzles on both sides, there is a risk of a partition bending toward the pressure chamber side of the non-ejecting nozzle. When a partition bends toward an adjacent pressure chamber side when ejecting an ink droplet, a pressure loss proportionate to this occurs, and there is a risk of the ejection characteristics of the ink droplet being altered, including a decrease in the velocity of ejected the ink droplet or reduced ink droplet amount.
In this manner, the pressure fluctuation conditions produced within the pressure chamber differ depending on the ejecting nozzles and whether the nozzles on both sides of the ejecting nozzle simultaneously activate, or simultaneously do not activate, and variation of the ejection characteristics in the ejecting nozzles and occurrence of so-called crosstalk caused by this have presented problems. JP-A-2009-226587, for example, proposes a configuration that applies an activation pulse with a voltage smaller than the ejection activating pulse, that is to say, an activation pulse where the pressure fluctuation generated in the pressure chamber is small, like a so-called micro-oscillating activation pulse to the pressure generating means of the non-ejecting nozzle, thereby providing pressure fluctuation of a level at which ink is not ejected into the pressure chamber of the non-ejecting nozzle.